Prior to the year 1873 there is no consecutive record of this or any other class of railroad accidents occurring in America, but during the six years 1873-8 there occurred twenty-one cases of minor disaster at draws, three only of them to passenger trains. Altogether, excluding the Shrewsbury river accident, these resulted in the death of five employés and injury to one other. No passenger was hurt. In Great Britain not a single case of disaster of any description has been reported as occurring at a draw-bridge since the year 1870, when the present system of official Board of Trade reports was begun. The lesson clearly to be drawn from a careful investigation of all the American accidents reported would seem to be that a statute provision making compulsory the interlocking of all draws in railroad bridges with a proper and infallible system of signals might have claims on the consideration of an intelligent legislature; not so an enactment which compels the stopping of trains at points where danger is small, and makes no provision as respects other points where it is great.
CHAPTER XI.
BRIDGE ACCIDENTS.
Great as were the terrors inspired by the Norwalk disaster in those comparatively early days of railroad experience, and deep as the impression on the public memory must have been to leave its mark on the statute book even to the present time, that and the similar disaster at the Richelieu river are believed to have been the only two of great magnitude which have occurred at open railroad draws. That this should be so is well calculated to excite surprise, for the draw-bridge precautions against accident in America are wretchedly crude and inadequate, amounting as a rule to little more than the primitive balls and targets by day and lanterns by night, without any system of alarms or interlocking. Electricity as an adjunct to human care, or a corrective rather of human negligence, is almost never used; and, in fact, the chief reliance is still on the vigilance of engine-drivers. But, if accidents at draws have been comparatively rare and unattended with any considerable loss of life, it has been far otherwise with the rest of the structures of which the draw forms a part. Bridge accidents in fact always have been, and will probably always remain, incomparably the worst to which travel by rail is exposed. It would be impossible for corporations to take too great precautions against them, and that the precautions taken are very great is conclusively shown by the fact that, with thousands of bridges many times each day subjected to the strain of the passage at speed of heavy trains, so very few disasters occur. When they do occur, however, the lessons taught by them are, though distinct enough, apt to be in one important respect of a far less satisfactory character than those taught by collisions. In the case of these last the great resultant fact speaks for itself. The whole community knows when it sees a block system, or a stronger car construction, or an improved train brake suddenly introduced that the sacrifice has not been in vain—that the lesson has been learned. It is by no means always so in the case of accidents on bridges. With these the cause of disaster is apt to be so scientific in its nature that it cannot even be described, except through the use of engineering terms which to the mass of readers are absolutely incomprehensible. The simplest of railroad bridges is an inexplicable mystery to at least ninety-nine persons out of each hundred. Even when the cause of disaster is understood, the precautions taken against its recurrence cannot be seen. From the nature of the case they must consist chiefly of a better material, or a more scientific construction, or an increased watchfulness on the part of officials and subordinates. This, however, is not apparent on the surface, and, when the next accident of the same nature occurs, the inference, as inevitable as it is usually unjust, is at once drawn that the one which preceded it had been productive of no results. The truth of this was strongly illustrated by the two bridge accidents which happened, the one at Ashtabula, Ohio, on the 29th of December, 1876, and the other at Tariffville, Connecticut, on the 15th of January, 1878.
There has been no recent disaster which combined more elements of horror or excited more widespread public emotion than that at Ashtabula bridge. It was, indeed, so terrible in its character and so heart-rending in its details, that for the time being it fairly divided the attention of the country with that dispute over the presidential succession, then the subject uppermost in the minds of all. A blinding northeasterly snow-storm, accompanied by a heavy wind, prevailed throughout the day which preceded the accident, greatly impeding the movement of trains. The Pacific express over the Michigan Southern & Lake Shore road had left Erie, going west, considerably behind its time, and had been started only with great difficulty and with the assistance of four locomotives. It was due at Ashtabula at about 5.30 o'clock P.M., but was three hours late, and, the days being then at their shortest, when it arrived at the bridge which was the scene of the accident the darkness was so great that nothing could be seen through the driving snow by those on the leading locomotive even for a distance of 50 feet ahead. The train was made up of two heavy locomotives, four baggage, mail and express cars, one smoking car, two ordinary coaches, a drawing-room car and three sleepers, being in all two locomotives and eleven cars, in the order named, containing, as nearly as can be ascertained, 190 human beings, of whom 170 were passengers. Ashtabula bridge is situated only about 1,000 feet east of the station of the same name, and spans a deep ravine, at the bottom of which flows a shallow stream, some two or three feet in depth, which empties into Lake Erie a mile or two away. The bridge was an iron Howe truss of 150 feet span, elevated 69 feet above the bottom of the ravine, and supported at either end by solid masonwork abutments. It had been built some fourteen years. As the train approached the bridge it had to force its way through a heavy snow-drift, and, when it passed onto it, it was moving at a speed of some twelve or fourteen miles an hour. The entire length of the bridge afforded space only for two of the express cars at most in addition to the locomotives, so that when the wheels of the leading locomotive rested on the western abutment of the bridge nine of the eleven cars which made up the train, including all those in which there were passengers, had yet to reach its eastern end. At the instant when the train stood in this position, the engineer of the leading locomotive heard a sudden cracking sound apparently beneath him, and thought he felt the bridge giving way. Instantly pulling the throttle valve wide open, his locomotive gave a spring forward and, as it did so, the bridge fell, the rear wheels of his tender falling with it. The jerk and impetus of the locomotive, however, sufficed to tear out the coupling, and as his tender was dragged up out of the abyss onto the track, though its rear wheels did not get upon the rails, the frightened engineer caught a fearful glimpse of the second locomotive as it seemed to turn and then fall bottom upwards into the ravine. The bridge had given way, not at once but by a slowly sinking motion, which began at the point where the pressure was heaviest, under the two locomotives and at the west abutment. There being two tracks, and this train being on the southernmost of the two, the southern truss had first yielded, letting that side of the bridge down, and rolling, as it were, the second locomotive and the cars immediately behind it off to the left and quite clear of a straight line drawn between the two abutments; then almost immediately the other truss gave way and the whole bridge fell, but in doing so swung slightly to the right. Before this took place the entire train with the exception of the last two sleepers had reached the chasm, each car as it passed over falling nearer than the one which had preceded it to the east abutment, and finally the last two sleepers came, and, without being deflected from their course at all, plunged straight down and fell upon the wreck of the bridge at its east end. It was necessarily all the work of a few seconds.
At the bottom of the ravine the snow lay waist deep and the stream was covered with ice some eight inches in thickness. Upon this were piled up the fallen cars and engine, the latter on top of the former near the western abutment and upside down. All the passenger cars were heated by stoves. At first a dead silence seemed to follow the successive shocks of the falling mass. In less than two minutes, however, the fire began to show itself and within fifteen the holocaust was at its height. As usual, it was a mass of human beings, all more or less stunned, a few killed, many injured and helpless, and more yet simply pinned down to watch, in the possession as full as helpless of all their faculties, the rapid approach of the flames. The number of those killed outright seems to have been surprisingly small. In the last car, for instance, no one was lost. This was due to the energy and presence of mind of the porter, a negro named Steward, who, when he felt the car resting firmly on its side, broke a window and crawled through it, and then passed along breaking the other windows and extricating the passengers until all were gotten out. Those in the other cars were far less fortunate. Though an immediate alarm had been given in the neighboring town, the storm was so violent and the snow so deep that assistance arrived but slowly. Nor when it did arrive could much be effected. The essential thing was to extinguish the flames. The means for so doing were close at hand in a steam pump belonging to the railroad company, while an abundance of hose could have been procured at another place but a short distance off. In the excitement and agitation of the moment contradictory orders were given, even to forbidding the use of the pump, and practically no effort to extinguish the fire was made. Within half an hour of the accident the flames were at their height, and when the next morning dawned nothing remained in the ravine but a charred and undistinguishable mass of car trucks, brake-rods, twisted rails and bent and tangled bridge iron, with the upturned locomotive close to the west abutment.
In this accident some eighty persons are supposed to have lost their lives, while over sixty others were injured. The exact number of those killed can never be known, however, as more than half of those reported were utterly consumed in the fire; indeed, even of the bodies recovered scarcely one half could be identified. Of the cause of the disaster much was said at the time in language most unnecessarily scientific;—but little was required to be said. It admitted of no extenuation. An iron bridge, built in the early days of iron-bridges,—that which fell under the train at Ashtabula, was faulty in its original construction, and the indications of weakness it had given had been distinct, but had not been regarded. That it had stood so long and that it should have given way when it did, were equally matters for surprise. A double track bridge, it should naturally have fallen under the combined pressure of trains moving simultaneously in opposite directions. The strain under which it yielded was not a particularly severe one, even taken in connection with the great atmospheric pressure of the storm then prevailing. It was, in short, one of those disasters, fortunately of infrequent occurrence, with which accident has little if any connection. It was due to original inexperience and to subsequent ignorance or carelessness, or possibly recklessness as criminal as it was fool-hardy.
Besides being a bridge accident, this was also a stove accident,—in this respect a repetition of Angola. One of the most remarkable features about it, indeed, was the fearful rapidity with which the fire spread, and the incidents of its spread detailed in the subsequent evidence of the survivors were simply horrible. Men, women and children, full of the instinct of self-preservation, were caught and pinned fast for the advancing flames, while those who tried to rescue them were driven back by the heat and compelled helplessly to listen to their shrieks. It is, however, unnecessary to enter into these details, for they are but the repetition of an experience which has often been told, and they do but enforce a lesson which the railroad companies seem resolved not to learn. Unquestionably the time in this country will come when through trains will be heated from a locomotive or a heating-car. That time, however, had not yet come. Meanwhile the evidence would seem to show that at Ashtabula, as at Angola, at least two lives were sacrificed in the subsequent fire to each one lost in the immediate shock of the disaster.[8]
But a few days more than a year after the Ashtabula accident another catastrophe, almost exactly similar in its details, occurred on the Connecticut Western road. It is impossible to even estimate the amount of overhauling to which bridges throughout the country had in the meanwhile been subjected, or the increased care used in their examination. All that can be said is that during the year 1877 no serious accident due to the inherent weakness of any bridge occcurred on the 70,000 miles of American railroad. Neither, so far as can be ascertained, was the Tariffville disaster to be referred to that cause. It happened on the evening of January 15, 1878. A large party of excursionists were returning from a Moody and Sankey revival meeting on a special train, consisting of two locomotives and ten cars. Half a mile west of Tariffville the railroad crosses the Farmington river. The bridge at this point was a wooden Howe truss, with two spans of 163 feet each. It had been in use about seven years and, originally of ample strength and good construction, there is no evidence that its strength had since been unduly impaired by neglect or exposure. It should, therefore, have sufficed to bear twice the strain to which it was now subjected. Exactly as at Ashtabula, however, the west span of the bridge gave way under the train just as the leading locomotives passed onto the tressel-work beyond it: the ice broke under the falling wreck, and the second locomotive with four cars were precipitated into the river. The remaining cars were stopped by the rear end of the third car, resting as it did on the centre pier of the bridge, and did not leave the rails. The fall to the surface of the ice was about ten feet. There was no fire to add to the horrors in this case, but thirteen persons were crushed to death or drowned, and thirty-three others injured.[9]
Naturally the popular inference was at once drawn that this was a mere repetition of the Ashtabula experience,—that the fearful earlier lesson had been thrown away on a corporation either unwilling or not caring to learn. The newspapers far and wide resounded with ill considered denunciation, and the demand was loud for legislation of the crudest conceivable character, especially a law prohibiting the passage over any bridge of two locomotives attached to one passenger train. The fact, however, seems to be that, except in its superficial details, the Tariffville disaster had no features in common with that at Ashtabula; as nearly as can be ascertained it was due neither to the weakness nor to the overloading of the bridge. Though the evidence subsequently given is not absolutely conclusive on this point, the probabilities would seem to be that, while on the bridge, the second locomotive was derailed in some unexplained way and consequently fell on the stringers which yielded under the sudden blow. The popular impression, therefore, as to the bearing which the first of these two strikingly similar accidents had upon the last tended only to bring about results worse than useless. The bridge fell, not under the steady weight of two locomotives, but under the sudden shock incident to the derailment of one. The remedy, therefore, lay in the direction of so planking or otherwise guarding the floors of similar bridges that in case of derailment the locomotives or cars should not fall on the stringers or greatly diverge from the rails so as to endanger the trusses. On the other hand the suggestion of a law prohibiting the passage over bridges of more than one locomotive with any passenger train, while in itself little better than a legal recognition of bad bridge building, also served to divert public attention from the true lesson of the disaster. Another newspaper precaution, very favorably considered at the time, was the putting of one locomotive, where two had to be used, at the rear end of the train as a pusher, instead of both in front. This expedient might indeed obviate one cause of danger, but it would do so only by substituting for it another which has been the fruitful source of some of the worst railroad disasters on record.[10]
CHAPTER XII.
THE PROTECTION OF BRIDGES.
Long, varied and terrible as the record of bridge disasters has become, there are, nevertheless, certain very simple and inexpensive precautions against them, which, altogether too frequently, corporations do not and will not take. At Ashtabula the bridge gave way. There was no derailment as there seems to have been at Tariffville. The sustaining power of a bridge is, of course, a question comparatively difficult of ascertainment. A fatal weakness in this respect may be discernable only to the eye of a trained expert. Derailment, however, either upon a bridge, or when approaching it, is in the vast majority of cases a danger perfectly easy to guard against. The precautions are simple and they are not expensive, yet, taking the railroads of the United States as a whole, it may well be questioned whether the bridges at which they have been taken do not constitute the exception rather than the rule. Not only is the average railroad superintendent accustomed to doing his work and running his road under a constant pressure to make both ends meet, which, as he well knows, causes his own daily bread to depend upon the economies he can effect; but, while he finds it hard work at best to provide for the multifarious outlays, long immunity from disaster breeds a species of recklessness even in the most cautious:—and yet the single mishap in a thousand must surely fall to the lot of some one. Many years ago the terrible results which must soon or late be expected wherever the consequences of a derailment on the approaches to a bridge are not securely guarded against, were illustrated by a disaster on the Great Western railroad of Canada, which combined many of the worst horrors of both the Norwalk and the New Hamburg tragedies; more recently the almost forgotten lesson was enforced again on the Vermont & Massachusetts road, upon the bridge over the Miller River, at Athol. The accident last referred to occurred on the 16th of June, 1870, but, though forcible enough as a reminder, it was tame indeed in comparison with the Des Jardines Canal disaster, which is still remembered though it happened so long ago as the 17th of March, 1857.
The Great Western railroad of Canada crossed the canal by a bridge at an elevation of about sixty feet. At the time of the accident there were some eighteen feet of water in the canal, though, as is usual in Canada at that season, it was covered by ice some two feet in thickness. On the afternoon of the 17th of March as the local accommodation train from Hamilton was nearing the bridge, its locomotive, though it was then moving at a very slow rate of speed, was in some way thrown from the track and onto the timbers of the bridge. These it cut through, and then falling heavily on the string-pieces it parted them, and instantly pitched headlong down upon the frozen surface of the canal below, dragging after it the tender, baggage car and two passenger cars, which composed the whole train. There was nothing whatever to break the fall of sixty feet; and even then two feet of ice only intervened between the ruins of the train and the bottom of the canal eighteen feet below. Two feet of solid ice will afford no contemptible resistance to a falling body; the locomotive and tender crushed heavily through it and instantly sank out of sight. In falling the baggage car struck a corner of the tender and was thus thrown some ten yards to one side, and was followed by the first passenger car, which, turning a somersault as it went, fell on its roof and was crushed to fragments, but only partially broke through the ice, upon which the next car fell endwise, and rested in that position. That every human being in the first car was either crushed or drowned seems most natural; the only cause for astonishment is found in the fact that any one should have survived such a catastrophe,—a tumble of sixty feet on ice as solid as a rock! Yet of four persons in the baggage car three went down with it, and not one of them was more than slightly injured. The engineer and fireman, and the occupants of the second passenger car, were less fortunate. The former were found crushed under the locomotive at the bottom of the canal; while of the latter ten were killed, and not one escaped severe injury. Very rarely indeed in the history of railroad accidents have so large a portion of those on the train lost their lives as in this case, for out of ninety persons sixty perished, and in the number was included every woman and child among the passengers, with a single exception.
There were two circumstances about this disaster worthy of especial notice. In the first place, as well as can now be ascertained in the absence of any trustworthy record of an investigation into causes, the accident was easily preventable. It appears to have been immediately caused by the derailment of a locomotive, however occasioned, just as it was entering on a swing draw-bridge. Thrown from the tracks, there was nothing in the flooring to prevent the derailed locomotive from deflecting from its course until it toppled over the ends of the ties, nor were the ties and the flooring apparently sufficiently strong to sustain it even while it held to its course. Under such circumstances the derailment of a locomotive upon any bridge can mean only destruction; it meant it then, it means it now; and yet our country is to-day full of bridges constructed in an exactly similar way. To make accidents from this cause, if not impossible at least highly improbable, it is only necessary to make the ties and flooring of all bridges between the tracks and for three feet on either side of them sufficiently strong to sustain the whole weight of a train off the track and in motion, while a third rail, or strong truss of wood, securely fastened, should be laid down midway between the rails throughout the entire length of the bridge and its approaches. With this arrangement, as the flanges of the wheels are on the inside, it must follow that in case of derailment and a divergence to one side or the other of the bridge, the inner side of the flange will come against the central rail or truss just so soon as the divergence amounts to half the space between the rails, which in the ordinary gauge is two feet and four inches. The wheels must then glide along this guard, holding the train from any further divergence from its course, until it can be checked. Meanwhile, as the ties and flooring extend for the space of three feet outside of the track, a sufficient support is furnished by them for the other wheels. A legislative enactment compelling the construction of all bridges in this way, coupled with additional provisions for interlocking of draws with their signals in cases of bridges across navigable waters, would be open to objection that laws against dangers of accident by rail have almost invariably proved ineffective when they were not absurd, but in itself, if enforced, it might not improbably render disasters like those at Norwalk and Des Jardines terrors of the past.
CHAPTER XIII.
CAR-COUPLINGS IN DERAILMENTS.
Wholly apart from the derailment, which was the real occasion of the Des Jardines disaster, there was one other cause which largely contributed to its fatality, if indeed that fatality was not in greatest part immediately due to it.
The question as to what is the best method of coupling together the several individual vehicles which make up every railroad train has always been much discussed among railroad mechanics. The decided weight of opinion has been in favor of the strongest and closest couplings, so that under no circumstances should the train separate into parts. Taking all forms of railroad accident together, this conclusion is probably sound. It is, however, at best only a balancing of disadvantages,—a mere question as to which practice involves the least amount of danger. Yet a very terrible demonstration that there are two sides to this as to most other questions was furnished at Des Jardines. It was the custom on the Great Western road not only to couple the cars together in the method then in general use, but also, as is often done now, to connect them by heavy chains on each side of the centre coupling. Accordingly when the locomotive broke through the Des Jardines bridge, it dragged the rest of the train hopelessly after it. This certainly would not have happened had the modern self-coupler been in use, and probably would not have happened had the cars been connected only by the ordinary link and pins; for the train was going very slowly, and the signal for brakes was given in ample time to apply them vigorously before the last cars came to the opening, into which they were finally dragged by the dead weight before them and not hurried by their own momentum.
On the other hand, we have not far to go in search of scarcely less fatal disasters illustrating with equal force the other side of the proposition, in the terrible consequences which have ensued from the separation of cars in cases of derailment. Take, for instance, the memorable accident of June 17, 1858, near Port Jervis, on the Erie railway.
As the express train from New York was running at a speed of about thirty miles an hour over a perfectly straight piece of track between Otisville and Port Jervis, shortly after dark on the evening of that day, it encountered a broken rail. The train was made up of a locomotive, two baggage cars and five passenger cars, all of which except the last passed safely over the fractured rail. The last car was apparently derailed, and drew the car before it off the track. These two cars were then dragged along, swaying fearfully from side to side, for a distance of some four hundred feet, when the couplings at last snapped and they went over the embankment, which was there some thirty feet in height. As they rushed down the slope the last car turned fairly over, resting finally on its roof, while one of its heavy iron trucks broke through and fell upon the passengers beneath, killing and maiming them. The other car, more fortunate, rested at last upon its side on a pile of stones at the foot of the embankment. Six persons were killed and fifty severely injured; all of the former in the last car.
In this case, had the couplings held, the derailed cars would not have gone over the embankment and but slight injuries would have been sustained. Modern improvements have, however, created safeguards sufficient to prevent the recurrence of other accidents under the same conditions as that at Port Jervis. The difficulty lay in the inability to stop a train, though moving at only moderate speed, within a reasonable time. The wretched inefficiency of the old hand-brake in a sudden emergency received one more illustration. The train seems to have run nearly half a mile after the accident took place before it could be stopped, although the engineer had instant notice of it and reversed his locomotive. The couplings did not snap until a distance had been traversed in which the modern train-brake would have reduced the speed to a point at which they would have been subjected to no dangerous strain.
The accident ten years later at Carr's Rock, sixteen miles west of Port Jervis, on the same road, was again very similar to the one just described: and yet in this case the parting of the couplings alone prevented the rear of the train from dragging its head to destruction. Both disasters were occasioned by broken rails; but, while the first occurred on a tangent, the last was at a point where the road skirted the hills, by a sharp curve, upon the outer side of which was a steep declivity of some eighty feet, jagged with rock and bowlders. It befell the night express on the 14th of April, 1876. The train was a long one, consisting of the locomotive, three baggage and express, and seven passenger cars, and it encountered the broken rail while rounding the curve at a high rate of speed. Again all except the last car, passed over the fracture in safety; this was snapped, as it were, off the track and over the embankment. At first it was dragged along, but only for a short distance; the intense strain then broke the coupling between the four rear cars and the head of the train, and, the last of the four being already over the embankment, the others almost instantly toppled over after it and rolled down the ravine. A passenger on this portion of the train, described the car he was in "as going over and over, until the outer roof was torn off, the sides fell out, and the inner roof was crushed in." Twenty-four persons were killed and eighty injured; but in this instance, as in that at Des Jardines, the only occasion for surprise was that there were any survivors.
Accidents arising from the parting of defective couplings have of course not been uncommon, and they constitute one of the greatest dangers incident to heavy gradients; in surmounting inclines freight trains will, it is found, break in two, and their hinder parts come thundering down the grade, as was seen at Abergele. The American passenger trains, in which each car is provided with brakes, are much less liable than the English, the speed of which is regulated by brake-vans, to accidents of this description. Indeed, it may be questioned whether in America any serious disaster has occurred from the fact that a portion of a passenger train on a road operated by steam got beyond control in descending an incline. There have been, however, terrible catastrophes from this cause in England, and that on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road near Helmshere, a station some fourteen miles north of Manchester, deserves a prominent place in the record of railroad accidents.
It occurred in the early hours of the morning of the 4th of September, 1860. There had been a great fête at the Bellevue Gardens in Manchester on the 3d, upon the conclusion of which some twenty-five hundred persons crowded at once upon the return trains. Of these there were, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire road, three; the first consisting of fourteen, the second of thirty-one, and the last of twenty-four carriages: and they were started, with intervals of ten minutes between them, at about eleven o'clock at night. The first train finished its journey in safety. Not so the second and the third. The Helmshere station is at the top of a steep incline. This the second train, drawn by two locomotives, surmounted, and then stopped for the delivery of passengers. While these were leaving the carriages, a snap as of fractured iron was heard, and the guards, looking back, saw the whole rear portion of the train, consisting of seventeen carriages and a brake-van, detached from the rest of it and quietly slipping down the incline. The detached portion was moving so slowly that one of the guards succeeded in catching the van and applying the brakes; it was, however, already too late. The velocity was greater than the brake-power could overcome, and the seventeen carriages kept descending more and more rapidly. Meanwhile the third train had reached the foot of the incline and begun to ascend it, when its engineer, on rounding a curve, caught sight of the descending carriages. He immediately reversed his engine, but before he could bring his train to a stand they were upon him. Fortunately the van-brakes of the detached carriages, though insufficient to stop them, yet did reduce their speed; the collision nevertheless was terrific. The force of the blow, so far as the advancing train was concerned, expended itself on the locomotive, which was demolished, while the passengers escaped with a fright. Not so those in the descending carriages. With them there was nothing to break the blow, and the two hindmost carriages were crushed to fragments and their passengers scattered over the line. It was shortly after midnight, and the excursionists clambered out of the trains and rushed frantically about, impeding every effort to clear away the débris and rescue the injured, whose shrieks and cries were incessant. The bodies of ten persons, one of whom had died of suffocation, were ultimately taken out from the wreck, and twenty-two others sustained fractures of limbs.
At Des Jardines the couplings were too strong; at Port Jervis and at Helmshere they were not strong enough; at Carr's Rock they gave way not a moment too soon. "There are objections to a plenum and there are objections to a vacuum," as Dr. Johnson remarked, "but a plenum or a vacuum it must be." There are no arguments, however, in favor of putting railroad stations or sidings upon an inclined plane, and then not providing what the English call "catch-points" or "scotches" to prevent such disasters as those at Abergele or Helmshere. In these two instances alone the want of them cost over fifty lives. In railroad mechanics there are after all some principles susceptible of demonstration. That vehicles, as well as water, will run down hill may be classed among them. That these principles should still be ignored is hardly less singular than it is surprising.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE REVERE CATASTROPHE.
The terrible disaster which occurred in front of the little station-building at Revere, six miles from Boston on the Eastern railroad of Massachusetts, in August 1871, was, properly speaking, not an accident at all; it was essentially a catastrophe—the legitimate and almost inevitable final outcome of an antiquated and insufficient system. As such it should long remain a subject for prayerful meditation to all those who may at any time be entrusted with the immediate operating of railroads. It was terribly dramatic, but it was also frightfully instructive; and while the lesson was by no means lost, it yet admits of further and advantageous study. For, like most other men whose lives are devoted to a special calling, the managers of railroads are apt to be very much wedded to their own methods, and attention has already more than once been called to the fact that, when any new emergency necessitates a new appliance, they not infrequently, as Captain Tyler well put it in his report to the Board of Trade for the year 1870, "display more ingenuity in finding objections than in overcoming them."
The Eastern railroad of Massachusetts connects Boston with Portland, in the state of Maine, by a line which is located close along the sea-shore. Between Boston and Lynn, a distance of eleven miles, the main road is in large part built across the salt marshes, but there is a branch which leaves it at Everett, a small station some miles out of Boston, and thence, running deviously through a succession of towns on the higher ground, connects with the main track again at Lynn; thus making what is known in England as a loop-road. At the time of the Revere accident this branch was equipped with but a single track, and was operated wholly by schedule without any reliance on the telegraph; and, indeed, there were not even telegraphic offices at a number of the stations upon it. Revere, the name of the station where the accident took place, was on the main line about five miles from Boston and two miles from Everett, where the Saugus branch, as the loop-road was called, began. The accompanying diagram shows the relative position of the several points and of the main and branch lines, a thorough appreciation of which is essential to a correct understanding of the disaster.
The travel over the Eastern railroad is of a somewhat exceptional nature, varying in a more than ordinary degree with the different seasons of the year. During the winter months the corporation had, in 1871, to provide for a regular passenger movement of about seventy-five thousand a week, but in the summer what is known as the excursion and pleasure travel not infrequently increased the number to one hundred and ten thousand, and even more. As a natural consequence, during certain weeks of each summer, and more especially towards the close of August, it was no unusual thing for the corporation to find itself taxed beyond its utmost resources. It is emergencies of this description, periodically occurring on every railroad, which always subject to the final test the organization and discipline of companies and the capacity of superintendents. A railroad in quiet times is like a ship in steady weather; almost anybody can manage the one or sail the other. It is the sudden stress which reveals the undeveloped strength or the hidden weakness; and the truly instructive feature in the Revere accident lay in the amount of hidden weakness everywhere which was brought to light under that sudden stress. During the week ending with that Saturday evening upon which the disaster occurred the rolling stock of the road had been heavily taxed, not only to accommodate the usual tide of summer travel, then at its full flood, but also those attending a military muster and two large camp-meetings upon its line. The number of passengers going over it had accordingly risen from about one hundred and ten thousand, the full summer average, to over one hundred and forty thousand; while instead of the one hundred and fifty-two trains a day provided for in the running schedule, there were no less than one hundred and ninety-two. It had never been the custom with those managing the road to place any reliance upon the telegraph in directing the train movement, and no use whatever appears to have been made of it towards straightening out the numerous hitches inevitable from so sudden an increase in that movement. If an engine broke down, or a train got off the track, there had accordingly throughout that week been nothing done, except patient and general waiting, until things got in motion again; each conductor or station-master had to look out for himself, under the running regulations of the road, and need expect no assistance from headquarters. This, too, in spite of the fact that, including the Saugus branch, no less than ninety-three of the entire one hundred and fifteen miles of road operated by the company were supplied only with a single track. The whole train movement, both of the main line and of the branches, intricate in the extreme as it was, thus depended solely on a schedule arrangement and the watchful intelligence of individual employés. Not unnaturally, therefore, as the week drew to a close the confusion became so great that the trains reached and left the Boston station with an almost total disregard of the schedule; while towards the evening of Saturday the employés of the road at that station directed their efforts almost exclusively to dispatching trains as fast as cars could be procured, thus trying to keep it as clear as possible of the throng of impatient travellers which continually blocked it up. Taken altogether the situation illustrated in a very striking manner that singular reliance of the corporation on the individuality and intelligence of its employés, which in another connection is referred to as one of the most striking characteristics of American railroad management, without a full appreciation of which it is impossible to understand its using or failing to use certain appliances.
According to the regular schedule four trains should have left the Boston station in succession during the hour and a half between 6.30 and eight o'clock P.M.: a Saugus branch train for Lynn at 6.30; a second Saugus branch train at seven; an accommodation train, which ran eighteen miles over the main line, at 7.15; and finally the express train through to Portland, also over the main line, at eight o'clock. The collision at Revere was between these last two trains, the express overtaking and running into the rear of the accommodation train; but it was indirectly caused by the delays and irregularity in movement of the two branch trains. It will be noticed that, according to the schedule, both of the branch trains should have preceded the accommodation train; in the prevailing confusion, however, the first of the two branch trains did not leave the station until about seven o'clock, thirty minutes behind its time, and it was followed forty minutes later, not by the second branch train, but by the accommodation train, which in its turn was twenty-five minutes late. Thirteen minutes afterwards the second Saugus branch train, which should have preceded, followed it, being nearly an hour out of time. Then at last came the Portland express, which got away practically on time, at a few minutes after eight o'clock. All of these four trains went out over the same track as far as the junction at Everett, but at that point the first and third of the four were to go off on the branch, while the second and fourth kept on over the main line. Between these last two trains the running schedule of the road allowed an ample time-interval of forty-five minutes, which, however, on this occasion was reduced, through the delay in starting, to some fifteen or twenty minutes. No causes of further delay, therefore, arising, the simple case was presented of a slow accommodation train being sent out to run eighteen miles in advance of a fast express train, with an interval of twenty minutes between them.
Unfortunately, however, the accommodation train was speedily subjected to another and very serious delay. It has been mentioned that the Saugus branch was a single track road, and the rules of the company were explicit that no outward train was to pass onto the branch at Everett until any inward train then due there should have arrived and passed off it. There was no siding at the junction, upon which an outward branch train could be temporarily placed to wait for the inward train, thus leaving the main track clear; and accordingly, under a strict construction of the rules, any outward branch train while awaiting the arrival at Everett of an inward branch train was to be kept standing on the main track, completely blocking it. The outward branch trains, it subsequently appeared, were often delayed at the junction, but no practical difficulty had arisen from this cause, as the employé in charge of the signals and switches there, exercising his common sense, had been in the custom of moving any delayed train temporarily out of the way onto the branch or the other main track, under protection of a flag, and thus relieving the block. The need of a siding to permit the passage of trains at this point had not been felt, simply because the employé in charge there had used the branch or other main track as a siding. On the day of the accident this employé happened to be sick, and absent from his post. His substitute either had no common sense or did not feel called upon to use it, if its use involved any increase of responsibility. Accordingly, when a block took place, the simple letter of the rule was followed;—and it is almost needless to add that a block did take place on the afternoon of August 26th.
The first of the branch trains, it will be remembered, had left Boston at about seven o'clock, instead of at 6.30, its schedule time. On arriving at Everett this train should have met and passed an inward branch train, which was timed to leave Lynn at six o'clock, but which, owing to some accident to its locomotive, and partaking of the general confusion of the day, on this particular afternoon did not leave the Lynn station until 7.30 o'clock, or one hour and a half after its schedule time, and one half-hour after the other train had left Boston. Accordingly, when the Boston train reached the junction its conductor found himself confronted by the rule forbidding him to enter upon the branch until the Lynn train then due should have passed off it, and so he quietly waited on the outward track of the main line, blocking it completely to traffic. He had not waited long before a special locomotive, on its way from Boston to Salem, came up and stopped behind him. This was presently followed by the accommodation train. Then the next branch train came along, and finally the Portland express. At such a time, and at that period of railroad development, there was something ludicrous about the spectacle. Here was a road utterly unable to accommodate its passengers with cars, while a succession of trains were standing idle for hours, because a locomotive had broken down ten miles off. The telegraph was there, but the company was not in the custom of putting any reliance upon it. A simple message to the branch trains to meet and pass at any point other than that fixed in the schedule would have solved the whole difficulty; but, no!—there were the rules, and all the rolling stock of the road might gather at Everett in solemn procession, but, until the locomotive at Lynn could be repaired, the law of the Medes and Persians was plain; and in this case it read that the telegraph was a new-fangled and unreliable auxiliary. And so the lengthening procession stood there long enough for the train which caused it to have gone to its destination and come back dragging the disabled locomotive from Lynn behind it to again take its place in the block.
At last, at about ten minutes after eight o'clock, the long-expected Lynn train made its appearance, and the first of the branch trains from Boston immediately went off the main line. The road was now clear for the accommodation train, which had been standing some twelve or fifteen minutes in the block, but which from the moment of again starting was running on the schedule time of the Portland express. This its conductor did not know. Every minute was vital, and yet he never thought to look at his watch. He had a vague impression that he had been delayed some six or eight minutes, when in reality he had been delayed fifteen; and, though he was running wholly out of his schedule time, he took not a single precaution, so persuaded was he that every one knew where he was.
The confusion among those in charge of the various engines and trains was, indeed, general and complete. As the Portland express was about to leave the Boston station, the superintendent of the road, knowing by the non-arrival of the branch train from Lynn that there must be a block at the Everett junction, had directed the depot-master to caution the engineer to look out for the trains ahead of him. The order, a merely verbal one, was delivered after the train had started, the depot-master walking along by the side of the slowly-moving locomotive, and was either incorrectly transmitted or not fully understood; the engine-driver supposed it to apply to the branch train which had started just before him, out of both its schedule time and schedule place. Presently, at the junction, he was stopped by the signal man of this train. The course of reasoning he would then have had to pass through to divine the true situation of affairs and to guide himself safely under the schedule in the light of the running rules was complicated indeed, and somewhat as follows: "The branch train," he should have argued to himself, "is stopped, and it is stopped because the train which should have left Lynn at six o'clock has not yet arrived; but, under the rules, that train should pass off the branch before the 6.30 train could pass onto it; if, therefore, the 'wild' train before me is delayed not only the 6.30 but all intermediate trains must likewise be delayed, and the accommodation train went out this afternoon after the 6.30 train, so it, too, must be in the block ahead of me; unless, indeed, as is usually the case, the signal-master has got it out of the block under the protection of a flag." This line of reasoning was, perhaps, too intricate; at any rate, the engine-driver did not follow it out, but, when he saw the tail-lights immediately before him disappear on the branch, he concluded that the main line was now clear, and dismissed the depot-master's caution from his mind. Meanwhile, as the engine-driver of this train was fully persuaded that the only other train in his front had gone off on the branch, the conductor of the accommodation train was equally persuaded that the head-light immediately behind him in the block at the junction had been that of the Portland express which consequently should be aware of his position. Both were wrong.
Thus when they left Everett the express was fairly chasing the accommodation train, and overtaking it with terrible rapidity. Even then no collision ought to have been possible. Unfortunately, however, the road had no system, even the crudest, of interval signals; and the utter irregularity prevailing in the train movement seemed to have demoralized the employés along the line, who, though they noticed the extreme proximity of the two trains to each other as they passed various points, all sluggishly took it for granted that those in charge of them were fully aware of their relative positions and knew what they were about. Thus, as the two trains approached the Revere station, they were so close together as to be on the same piece of straight track at the same time, and a passenger standing at the rear end of the accommodation train distinctly saw the head-light of the express locomotive. The night, however, was not a clear one, for an east wind had prevailed all day, driving a mist in from the sea which lay in banks over the marshes, lifting at times so that distant objects were quite visible, and then obscuring them in its heavy folds. Consequently it did not at all follow, because the powerful reflecting head-light of the locomotive was visible from the accommodation train, that the dim tail-lights of the latter were also visible to those on the locomotive. Here was another mischance. The tail-lights in use by the company were ordinary red lanterns without reflecting power.
The station house at Revere stood at the end of a tangent, the track curving directly before it. In any ordinary weather the tail-lights of a train standing at this station would have been visible for a very considerable distance down the track in the direction of Boston, and even on the night of the accident they were probably visible for a sufficient distance in which to stop any train approaching at a reasonable rate of speed. Unfortunately the engineer of the Portland express did not at once see them, his attention being wholly absorbed in looking for other signals. Certain freight train tracks to points on the shore diverged from the main line at Revere, and the engine-drivers of all trains approaching that place were notified by signals at a masthead close to the station whether the switches were set for the main line or for these freight tracks. A red lantern at the masthead indicated that the main line was closed; in the absence of any signal it was open. In looking for this signal as he approached Revere the engine-driver of the Portland express was simply attending closely to his business, for, had the red light been at the masthead, his train must at once have been stopped. Unfortunately, however, while peering through the mist at the masthead he overlooked what was directly before him, until, when at last he brought his eyes down to the level, to use his own words at the subsequent inquest, "the tail lights of the accommodation train seemed to spring right up in his face."
When those in charge of the two trains at almost the same moment became aware of the danger, there was yet an interval of some eight hundred feet between them. The express train was, however, moving at a speed of some twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, and was equipped only with the old-fashioned hand-brake. In response to the sharply given signal from the whistle these were rapidly set, but the rails were damp and slippery, so that the wheels failed to catch upon them, and, when everything was done which could be done, the eight hundred feet of interval sufficed only to reduce the speed of the colliding locomotive to about ten miles an hour.
In the rear car of the accommodation train there were at the moment of the accident some sixty-five or seventy human beings, seated and standing. They were of both sexes and of all ages; for it was a Saturday evening in August, and many persons had, through the confusion of the trains, been long delayed in their return from the city to their homes at the sea-side. The first intimation the passengers had of the danger impending over them was from the sudden and lurid illumination of the car by the glare from the head-light of the approaching locomotive. One of them who survived the disaster, though grievously injured, described how he was carelessly watching a young man standing in the aisle, laughing and gayly chatting with four young girls, who were seated, when he saw him turn and instantly his face, in the sudden blaze of the head-light, assumed a look of frozen horror which was the single thing in the accident indelibly impressed on the survivor's memory; that look haunted him. The car was crowded to its full capacity, and the colliding locomotive struck it with such force as to bury itself two-thirds of its length in it. At the instant of the crash a panic had seized upon the passengers, and a sort of rush had taken place to the forward end of the car, into which furniture, fixtures and human beings were crushed in a shapeless, indistinguishable mass. Meanwhile the blow had swept away the smoke-stack of the locomotive, and its forward truck had been forced back in some unaccountable way until it rested between its driving wheels and the tender, leaving the entire boiler inside of the passenger car and supported on its rear truck. The valves had been so broken as to admit of the free escape of the scalding steam, while the coals from the fire-box were scattered among the débris, and coming in contact with the fluid from the broken car lamps kindled the whole into a rapid blaze. Neither was the fire confined to the last car of the train. It has been mentioned that in the block at Everett a locomotive returning to Salem had found itself stopped just in advance of the accommodation train. At the suggestion of the engine-driver of that train this locomotive had there coupled on to it, and consequently made a part of it at Revere. When the collision took place, therefore, the four cars of which the accommodation train was made up were crushed between the weight of the entire colliding train on one side and that of two locomotives on the other. That they were not wholly demolished was due simply to the fact that the last car yielded to the blow, and permitted the locomotive of the express train fairly to imbed itself in it. As it was, the remaining cars were jammed and shattered, and, though the passengers in them escaped, the oil from the broken lamps ignited, and before the flames could be extinguished the cars were entirely destroyed.
This accident resulted in the death of twenty-nine persons, and in more or less severe injuries to fifty-seven others. No person, not in the last car of the accommodation train was killed, and one only was seriously injured. Of those in the last car more than half lost their lives; many instantly by crushing, others by inhaling the scalding steam which poured forth from the locomotive boiler into the wreck, and which, where it did not kill, inflicted frightful injuries. Indeed, for the severity of injuries and for the protractedness of agony involved in it, this accident has rarely, if ever, been exceeded. Crushing, scalding and burning did their work together.
It may with perfect truth be said that the disaster at Revere marked an epoch in the history of railroad development in New England. At the moment it called forth the deepest expression of horror and indignation, which, as usual in such cases, was more noticeable for its force than for its wisdom. An utter absence of all spirit of justice is, indeed, a usual characteristic of the more immediate utterances, both from the press and on the platform, upon occasions of this character. Writers and orators seem always to forget that, next to the immediate sufferers and their families, the unfortunate officials concerned are the greatest losers by railroad accidents. For them, not only reputation but bread is involved. A railroad employé implicated in the occurrence of an accident lives under a stigma. And yet, from the tenor of public comment it might fairly be supposed that these officials are in the custom of plotting to bring disasters about, and take a fiendish delight in them. Nowhere was this ever illustrated more perfectly than in Massachusetts during the last days of August and the early days of September, 1871. Grave men—men who ought to have known better—indulged in language which would have been simply ludicrous save for the horror of the event which occasioned but could not justify it. A public meeting, for instance, was held at the town of Swampscott on the evening of the Monday succeeding the catastrophe. The gentleman who presided over it very discreetly, in his preliminary remarks, urged those who proposed to join in the discussion to control their feelings. Hardly had he ceased speaking, however, when Mr. Wendell Phillips was noticed among the audience, and immediately called to the platform. His remarks were a most singular commentary on the chairman's injunction to calmness. He began by announcing that the first requisite to the formation of a healthy public opinion in regard to railroad accidents, as other things, was absolute frankness of speech, and he then proceeded as follows:—"So I begin by saying that to my mind this terrible disaster, which has made the last thirty-six hours so sad to us all, is a deliberate murder. I think we should try to get rid in the public mind of any real distinction between the individual who, in a moment of passion or in a moment of heedlessness, takes the life of one fellow-man, and the corporation that in a moment of greed, of little trouble, of little expense, of little care, of little diligence, takes lives by wholesale. I think the first requisite of the public mind is to say that there is no accident in the case, properly speaking. It is a murder; the guilt of murder rests somewhere."
Mr. Phillip's definition of the crime of "deliberate murder" would apparently somewhat unsettle the criminal law as at present understood, but he was not at all alone in this bathos of extravagance. Prominent gentlemen seemed to vie with each other in their display of ignorance. Mr. B. F. Butler, for instance, suggested his view of the disaster and the measure best calculated to prevent a repetition of it; which last was certainly original, inasmuch as he urged the immediate raising of the pay of all engine-men until a sufficiently high order of ability and education should be brought into the occupation to render impossible the recurrence of an accident which was primarily caused by the negligence, not of an engineer, but of a conductor. Another gentleman described with much feeling his observations during a recent tour in Europe, and declared that such a catastrophe as that at Revere would have been impossible there. As a matter of fact the official reports not only showed that the accident was one of a class of most frequent occurrence, but also that sixty-one cases of it had occurred in Great Britain alone during the very year the gentleman in question was journeying in Europe, and had occasioned over six hundred cases of death or personal injury. Perhaps, in order to illustrate how very reckless in statement a responsible gentleman talking under excitement may become, it is worth while to quote in his own language Captain Tyler's brief description of one of those sixty-one accidents which "could not possibly," but yet did, occur. As miscellaneous reading it is amusing.
"As four London & North-Western excursion trains on September 2, 1870, were returning from a volunteer review at Penrith, the fourth came into collision at Penruddock with the third of those trains. An hundred and ten passengers and three servants of the company were injured. These trains were partly in charge of acting guards, some of whom were entirely inexperienced, as well in the line as in their duties; and of engine-drivers and firemen, of whom one, at all events, was very much the worse for liquor. The side-lamps on the hind van of the third train were obscured by a horse-box, which was wider than the van. There were no special means of protection to meet the exceptional contingency of three such trains all stopping on their way from the eastward, to cross two others from the westward, at this station. And the regulations for telegraphing the trains were altogether neglected."
CHAPTER XV.
REAR END COLLISIONS.
The annals of railroad accidents are full of cases of "rear-end collision," as it is termed.[11] Their frequency may almost be accepted as a very accurate gauge of the pressure of traffic on any given system of lines, and because of them the companies are continually compelled to adopt new and more intricate systems of operation. At first, on almost all roads, trains follow each other at such great intervals that no precaution at all, other than flags and lanterns, are found necessary. Then comes a succeeding period when an interval of time between following trains is provided for, through a system of signals which at given points indicate danger during a certain number of minutes after the passage of every train. Then, presently, the alarming frequency of rear collisions demonstrates the inadequacy of this system, and a new one has to be devised, which, through the aid of electricity, secures between the trains an interval of space as well as of time. This last is known as the "block-system," of which so much has of late years been heard.
The block-system is so important a feature in the modern operation of railroads, and in its present stage of development it illustrates so strikingly the difference between the European and the American methods, that more particular reference will have presently to be made to it.[12] For the present it is enough to say that rear-end collisions occur notwithstanding all the precautions implied in a thoroughly perfected "block-system." There was such a case on the Metropolitan road, in the very heart of London, on the 29th of August, 1873. It happened in a tunnel. A train was stalled there, and an unfortunate signal officer in a moment of flurry gave "line clear" and sent another train directly into it.
A much more impressive disaster, both in its dramatic features and as illustrating the inadequacy of every precaution depending on human agency to avert accident under certain conditions, was afforded in the case of a collision which occurred on the London & Brighton Railway on August 25, 1861; ten years almost to a day before that at Revere. Like the Eastern railroad, the London & Brighton enjoyed an enormous passenger traffic, which became peculiarly heavy during the vacation season towards the close of August; and it was to the presence of the excursion trains made necessary to accomodate this traffic that the catastrophes were in both cases due. In the case of the London & Brighton road it occurred on a Sunday. An excursion train from Portsmouth on that day was to leave Brighton at five minutes after eight A. M., and was to be followed by a regular Sunday excursion train at 8.15 or ten minutes later, and that again, after the lapse of a quarter of an hour, by a regular parliamentary train at 8.30. These trains were certainly timed to run sufficiently near to each other; but, owing to existing pressure of traffic on the line, they started almost simultaneously. The Portsmouth excursion, which consisted of sixteen carriages, was much behind its time, and did not leave the Brighton station until 8.28; when, after a lapse of three minutes, it was followed by the regular excursion train at 8.31, and that again by the parliamentary train at 8.35. Three passenger trains had thus left the station on one track in seven minutes! The London and Brighton Railway traverses the chalky downs, for which that portion of England is noted, through numerous tunnels, the first of which after leaving Brighton is known as the Patcham Tunnel, about five hundred yards in length, while two and a half miles farther on is the Croydon Tunnel, rather more than a mile and a quarter in length.
The line between these tunnels was so crooked and obscured that the managers had adopted extraordinary precautions against accident. At each end of the Croydon Tunnel a signal-man was stationed, with a telegraphic apparatus, a clock and a telegraph bell in his station. The rule was absolute that when any train entered the tunnel the signal-man at the point of entry was to telegraph "train in," and no other train could follow until the return signal of "train out" came from the other side. In face of such a regulation it was difficult to see how any collision in the tunnel was possible. When the Portsmouth excursion train arrived, it at once entered the tunnel and the fact was properly signaled to the opposite outlet. Before the return signal that this train was out was received, the regular excursion train came in sight. It should have been stopped by a self-acting signal which was placed about a quarter of a mile from the mouth of the tunnel, and which each passing locomotive set at "danger," where it remained until shifted to "safety," by the signal-man, on receipt of the message, "train out." Through some unexplained cause, the Portsmouth excursion train had failed to act on this signal, which consequently still indicated safety when the Brighton excursion train came up. Accordingly the engine-driver at once passed it, and went on to the tunnel. As he did so, the signal-man, perceiving some mistake and knowing that he had not yet got his return signal that the preceding train was out, tried to stop him by waving his red flag. It was too late, however, and the train passed in. A moment later the parliamentary train also came in sight, and stopped at the signal of danger. Now ensued a most singular misapprehension between the signal-men, resulting in a terrible disaster. The second train had run into the tunnel and was supposed by the signal-man to be on its way to the other end of it, when he received the return message that the first train was out. To this he instantly responded by again telegraphing "train in," referring now to the second train. This dispatch the signal-man at the opposite end conceived to be a repetition of the message referring to the first train, and he accordingly again replied that the train was out. This reply, however, the other operator mistook as referring to the second train, and accordingly he signaled "safety," and the third train at once got under way and passed into the tunnel. Unfortunately the engineer of the second train had seen the red flag waved by the signal-man, and, in obedience to it, stopped his locomotive as soon as possible in the tunnel and began to back out of it. In doing so, he drove his train into the locomotive of the third train advancing into it. The tunnel was twenty-four feet in height. The engine of the parliamentary train struck the rear carriage of the excursion train and mounted upon its fragments, and then on those of the carriage in front of it, until its smoke-stack came in contact with the roof of the tunnel. It rested finally in a nearly upright position. The collision had taken place so far within the tunnel as to be beyond the reach of daylight, and the wreck of the trains had quite blocked up the arch, while the steam and smoke from the engines poured forth with loud sound and in heavy volumes, filling the empty space with stifling and scalding vapors. When at last assistance came and the trains could be separated, twenty-three corpses were taken from the ruins, while one hundred and seventy-six other persons had sustained more or less severe injuries.
A not less extraordinary accident of the same description, unaccompanied, however, by an equal loss of life, occured on the Great Northern Railway upon the 10th of June, 1866. In this case the tube of a locomotive of a freight train burst at about the centre of the Welwyn Tunnel, some five miles north of Hatfield, bringing the train to a stand-still. The guard in charge of the rear of the train failed from some cause to go back and give the signal for an obstruction, and speedily another freight train from the Midland road entered and dashed into the rear of the train already there. Apparently those in charge of these two trains were in such consternation that they did not think to provide against a further disaster; at any rate, before measures to that end had been taken, an additional freight train, this time belonging to the Great Northern road, came up and plowed into the ruins which already blocked the tunnel. One of the trains had contained wagons laden with casks of oil, which speedily became ignited from contact with the coals scattered from the fire-boxes, and there then ensued one of the most extraordinary spectacles ever witnessed on a railroad. The tunnel was filled to the summit of its arch and completely blocked with the wrecked locomotives and wagons. These had ignited, and the whole cavity, more than a half a mile in length, was converted into one huge furnace, belching forth smoke and flame with a loud roaring sound through its several air shafts. So fierce was the fire that no attempt was made to subdue it, and eighteen hours elapsed before any steps could be taken towards clearing the track. Strange to say, in this disaster the lives of but two persons were lost.
Rear-end collisions have been less frequent in this country than in England, for the simple reason that the volume of traffic has pressed less heavily on the capacity of the lines. Yet here, also, they have been by no means unknown. In 1865 two occurred, both of which were accompanied with a considerable loss of life; though, coming as they did during the exciting scenes which marked the close of the war of the Rebellion, they attracted much less public notice than they otherwise would. The first of these took place in New Jersey on the 7th of March, 1865, just three days after the second inauguration of President Lincoln. As the express train from Washington to New York over the Camden & Amboy road was passing through Bristol, about thirty miles from Philadelphia, at half-past-two o'clock in the morning, it dashed into the rear of the twelve o'clock "owl train," from Kensington to New York, which had been delayed by meeting an oil train on the track before it. The case appears to have been one of very culpable negligence, for, though the owl train was some two hours late, those in charge of it seem to have been so deeply engrossed in what was going on before them that they wholly neglected to guard their rear. The express train accordingly, approaching around a curve, plunged at a high rate of speed into the last car, shattering it to pieces; the engine is even said to have passed completely through that car and to have imbedded itself in the one before it. It so happened that most of the sufferers by this accident, numbering about fifty, were soldiers on their way home from the army upon furlough.